As second generation Englishmen in the New World who felt that the frontier was a much better choice than staying in the area where he had been born. He became a helper in the area of Hatfield, Massachusetts, married and was a soldier,. a salesman and a farmer. As the years passed there was a skirmish with the Indians and it was in this that Ben earned his name as "The Hero of the Connecticut Valley/". But his real bravery came in the tracing his wife and daughter to Canada in the midst of Winter.
